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He hears the incessant thumps of Luffy bounding up the ladder to their treehouse.
It’s noon, the sun washing over the scene in its lazy warmth as Ace stifles a sob with his fist, wipes back tear tracks from cheeks the light had failed to warm up.
It’s at times like this he wishes he had a mother to run to, someone who would comfort him, lend an ear and kiss him better. She’d never dismiss his feelings, and she would make him those sandwich things and kiss the top of his head before sending him off to school. He’d have a jolly, kind father, and he’d give Ace warm hugs, call him ‘son’ and buy him his favourite chocolate bar on the walk home. They’d read him bedtime stories, and everything would end up happily ever after, just like in the fairytales.
“Hey, Ace!” Luffy chirps, face morphing into one of thinly veiled concern. “Is Ace sad? Should I call Sabo, too? What’s wrong? Tell me!” His small, chubby hands curl into the fists Ace had taught him how to form. “I’m gonna punch it!”
Ace lets that haughty, self assured expression line his features, manages a taunting smile, chin tipped high in the air.
“Of course nothing’s wrong, you idiot! Get over here and train, before I ‘fist of love’ you myself!”
.
.
.
Deuce winces as he layers cream on top of the rapidly purpling bruise blossoming across tense, broad shoulders.
“That’s got to hurt. You should’ve been more careful, Captain!”
Ace clutches a theatrical hand to his chest, throwing in a cheeky wink. “You’ve known me long enough to understand you yearn for a hopeless dream.”
Deuce’s eyes roll under the mask. “Unfortunately so.” He presses down, and for God’s sake this is definitely not a normal bruise.
A bone contusion - that’s what Sabo and he had found in that old medical book - a bone bruise.
Now, Ace had had a weirdly high pain tolerance for basically his entire life - to him, this was nothing - but to Deuce, it was a cause for concern. No doubt, his first mate would begin hypothesising about the possibility of fractures and whatnot.
He doesn’t want Deuce to worry. His Captain was supposed to be infallible. Ace did not falter, nor struggle.
Even if they did worry - it felt sort of good to know that maybe other people cared, just a little bit, but that was a selfish, selfish way of thinking.
Deuce presses down on the bruise again. “How bad does it hurt, from one to ten?”
Ace smiles : cocky, arrogant, deceptive.
“Could I pick a number less than one?”
.
.
.
He does not perish at Marineford. Neither does Luffy - but thousands of others do. And to think, he’d been a little.. happy to see them up in arms, to see that perhaps he was worth fighting for, dared to dream that he was worth more than dirt, even.
What a monster he was.
Sabo has found him again, and he rests in the other room with Luffy.
He sheds the mask for the first time since his cursed birth.
Here, Ace cries, his lungs on fire and his tears scalding hot as they drip.
For his entire life, every little action has been laced through with violent anger.
It hurts, and it always has. It’s hurt from start to finish, from bottom to top, and Portgas D. Ace doesn’t know how the fucking hell he could make it stop.